I have to apologise to everyone who such nice comments on your work, because I found it incomprehensible and likely to earn a bad reputation among those who don’t really like art games. I like art games myself, but I didn’t really like this one, and it inspired a lot of negative feelings in me towards the entire concept of - you know - art games in general and how they can actually be harmful to those who take them too seriously without understanding what, if anything, they are attempting to say.

So I gave your title an extremely negative review on Kratzen, and I should let you know that I’m in no way trying to trivialise whatever struggles you have gone through as a human being. I have to rate this piece of art as I see fit, and I just didn’t understand it at all. That’s the way it is.

why do you have to let devs personally know when you trash their games lol, there's probably better ways of self promotion. at least the way I look at it - I also write about freeware and I have written a rare negative review, but I try to keep them measured and interesting, and I make it a point not to confront the developers with my criticism. I've played games I've greatly liked and others I've exhaustingly disliked where it's incredibly obvious that the devs did not do their best work. and so I'm always concerned about the overall utility of my writing, trying to ensure my writing is about what the game can do rather than just if it's good or bad. if nobody has heard of the game, is it even worthwhile to make insular observations that only venerate myself as a kind of tastemaker? does that have a positive effect? will that help the culture?

I'm not necessarily bothered by the criticism, because I know what I made and I know what I have to do in order to make a game in only a month. I'm influenced greatly by abstract expressionism and minimalism, yet I recognize these are not popular or welcomed styles in videogame art.

however, I am extremely bothered by how that review dehumanized me, and how made it seem like I was a bad, and even dangerous person, for trying to express something that's hard for me to express. this game is representation of a couple of bad days. I am not a bad person for having days of weakness. to write or act as if I am, that my inability to appeal to reason is a danger, I think overall increases the stigma of MI, because I've never found MI to be something comprehensible or logical. I don't think the purpose of my work, or my life even, is trying to get the most people possible to understand what it's like to have MI. I just wanted to make something like, if you can feel this, I do too. you're not alone. the reason the game is concerned with portrayals that are suspended, rather than conclusions or resolutions, is because there is no cure, there is no end to depression. there's just coping and treatments. there are always good days and bad days. I can't reason them away, I still don't fully understand why I can feel like shit after I accomplish my goals or have an amazing day. I just live with it

It’s hard to relate to something we don’t understand, and it’s even harder trying to express what you don’t really understand yourself. I don’t see you as a worse person because something you made wasn’t to my tastes, or that your feelings are invalid because you didn’t put them in a way I would consider to be the “correct” way to put them. I have no reason to put down someone I don’t even know, and I don’t want that to be the end result of my work.

You have to understand there is a silent majority of people who will come away from your work thinking it’s a bunch of nonsense, and you will never hear from those people because they don’t care about you as a person. And you have to understand that even though it is your art, you’ve still posted it publicly, and your audience is going to express their thoughts about it. I’m your audience, and I didn’t like it.

I pander to the majority of people who are sound of body and mind with few scruples in their life, and I have to bring out work that’s most appealing to them while encouraging them to make great work like the games I do praise. I don’t feel this game is the type of work they should be making, and I reflected that in my review.

If you care about art, don’t get mad about some Internet Asshole’s review of a work that I forgot about a week after its publication. Get even. Keep making good work and keep making things that people want to see. Because, hell, people do want to see it. That’s the way it is.

my truthful feelings are closer to anxiety, fear, paranoia, self-hate. part of my brain is convinced I'm a bad person and will use selective bias to latch on to any scraps in order to reinforce that. this circumstance of mine is of course not your fault, but it is often the reality for people with depressive or anxiety disorders, and to throw a sufferer under the bus somehow to protect all of the others who have depression is a contradiction. either you're here for anyone who suffers the illness in any messy way (which in my experience, being friends with others with MI, is most people), or you don't care. and again, I do not mind the natural course of someone not liking what I've made. I can reiterate, I wouldn't be replying if it was just a review of my game. I'm replying a second time because I don't care about the art at this moment. it was your ignorant comments on depression & insults to my person that had me talking about MI specifically. I wasn't trying to defend the game. if it is really not your goal to not put down people you don't know, please, in the future, stick to writing about the game, do not speculate about the developer's lives in your review. I don't believe that's the job of a critic. I find no difficulty in expressing what I think is wrong or harmful about a text without saying the author themselves is lacking or a dangerous person, because there's no actual way I could know that just by playing a game of theirs.